Virginia: On Saturday, December 30th, a coalition of elected officials, grassroots activists, and community leaders will hold simultaneous rallies throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia in response to irregularities in recent House of Delegates Elections. Richmond, Fredricksburg, and the city of Alexandria will each be home to a Rally For Electoral Justice.

In the 28th District, a registrar erroneously assigned hundreds of voters to the wrong voting district. At least 86 people were registered to vote, and showed up on Election Day only to be illegally denied the right to cast their ballots. Meanwhile, 61 people from the wrong House District had their faulty ballots counted. There is a pending lawsuit brought by voters in the 28th District demanding a new election; as reported by the Washington Post, the current results of this “Virginia’s House election is irreparably tainted.”

In the 94th District, after both parties agreed to a fair and detailed recount process and spent all day painstakingly following the jointly-agreed- upon rules leading to a one-vote victory for Shelly Simonds, her opponent changed his mind. He realized he lost and then challenged the result in court. Remarkably, the court allowed the challenge, which changed the result from a one-vote Democratic win to a tie. Originally, the winner of the election was going to be determined by a drawing of lots in Richmond on December 27th; however, a timely letter by the Board of Elections has delayed the drawing.

In both cases, illegal actions have taken election results out of the hands of voters. The integrity of Virginia elections is now being called into question, and Virginians from all backgrounds are demanding a fair resolution to these issues.